10 THE BODIES OP SPACE, 



gentlest and beautifullest of our emotions lead us to believe 

 that we are as children in his care, and as vessels in his hand. 

 We must consequently understand and this is for the 

 reader's special attention that when we speak of natural 

 law, we only speak of the mode in which the Divine Power 

 is exercised. It is but another phrase for the action of the 

 ever present and sustaining God. 



Viewing Nature in this light, the pursuit of science is but 

 the seeking of a deeper acquaintance with the Infinite. 

 The endeavour to explain any events in her history, however 

 grand or mysterious these may be, is only to sit like a child 

 at a mother's knee, and fondly ask of the things which passed 

 before we were born. In modesty and reverence, in the 

 spirit of the love of truth, and that craving of an innate help- 

 lessness which seems as if it could never be satisfied till it 

 knew all, we may even inquire if there be any trace of the 

 origin of that arrangement of the universe which is presented 

 to our notice. 



In this inquiry, we start with the clear fact of the orbs 

 being determined in their forms by law. That law neces- 

 sarily infers a previous form of matter, one in which the mole- 

 cules were separately moveable fluid or gasiform just as the 

 law by which the dew-drop is spherified, implies that the 

 constituent particles were in such a condition before it took 

 effect. We thus see the Will which constitutes law acting 

 in a non-material manner in that portion of what we are ac- 

 customed to call Creation. In the places and relations of the 

 orbs, there is equal proof, though of a less popularly tangible 

 kind, that law was concerned. The work was done by the 

 will of God, expressed in the form of the law of gravitation. 

 When we corne to consider the motions, and regard them as 

 necessarily containing results of an impulse, we are apt to sup- 

 pose some immediate and more direct application of divine 

 power necessary ; but this cannot stand a second considera- 

 tion. We see the motions inextricably wrought up in rela- 

 tion with the magnitudes, as well as the arrangements ; a 

 totally different mode of their origin is therefore inconceiv- 

 able. Having, moreover, in gravitation a general source of 



